Poetry: Philip Larkin

End

My train draws out, and the last thing I see

Is my three friends turning from the light,

And I am left to travel through the night

With this one thought for company:

Even a king will find himself alone,

Calling for songs one night, old songs, will find

The guests departed, nothing left behind

Except the silence, and a clean-picked bone.

—Philip Larkin

Does Philip Larkin, a visceral poet if ever there was one, consider his life ‘a clean-picked bone’? I love that last line. Reminds me of the last stanza of Emily Dickinson’s well-known poem about the snake, one of ‘nature’s people’:

But never met this fellow,

Attended or alone,

Without a tighter breathing,

And zero at the bone.

A tenuous comparison to make, nothing but the bone. I have mixed feelings about much of Larkin’s poetry, but I like this one.

Filed under: Poetry Tagged: End, Philip Larkin